1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of controlling the resumption of the printing of a print job after the printing has been interrupted.
2. Description of the Related Art
Office equipment manufacturers are currently entering the commercial printing market (Print On Demand market, abbreviated as “POD market”). In light of the current situation, realization of products which take into consideration a POD environment with regard to product design, and also which have sufficient convenience and flexibility to be acceptable in not only office-environment-based printing environments but also in POD-environment-based printing environments, is desirable. However, little consideration has been given to this issue until now.
For example, printing apparatuses, many of which are MFPs (Multi-Function Peripherals) designed with an office-environment-based printing environment in mind, have automatic job recovery functions. This is a function of automatically resuming a job after the cause of an interruption has been removed.
A configuration such as described below has been proposed in recent years as a specific operation of such an automatic job recovery function.
Let us say that for example, an interruption cause, such as running out of sheets, has occurred in a printing apparatus while printing a certain job X to be processed. In this case, the printing system temporarily stops the processing of the job X. Let us also say that there is another job Y besides this job X, standing by to be processed. In this case, printing of the job Y is automatically started while the job X is interrupted. Let us further say that the cause of interruption of the job X, which is in the interrupted state, is removed by, for example, the operator adding sheets.
Now, as described above, the cause of interruption of the interrupted job (job X in this example) has been removed, but at this point, the other subsequent job (job Y in this example) is still being printed. In this case, the printing apparatus continues printing of the job being executed (in this example, job Y) even though the cause of interruption of the interrupted job (job X) has been removed. At the point that the job being executed (job Y in this example) has finished, the printing apparatus automatically resumes processing of the interrupted job (job X in this example). In other words, even if the cause of interruption of job X has been removed, automatically resuming processing of job X occurs only after waiting for printing processing of the job Y to be completed.
Printing apparatuses and printing system configured so as to be capable of carrying out the above actions are currently being proposed. This point can be more fully understood by making reference to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-305777.
However, the function and control implemented in such printing apparatuses and printing systems do not necessarily meet the needs in POD-environment-based printing environments, though satisfactory in office-environment-based printing environments.
The reason is that in POD-environment-based printing environments, the greatest purveyor of such printing system will most likely be commercial printing firms. Such commercial printing firms take orders for printing from customers, and create printed articles which the customers order, using the printing system. Upon the printed articles being delivered to the customer, the commercial printing firm is paid by the customer.
In such a POD based printing environment, printing apparatuses and printing systems are not tools for assisting business in the office environment, but rather can be said to be business tools for producing products for which the business is paid by the customer.
Moreover, in a POD based printing environment there will most likely be demand for capabilities to process printing requests from customers in a shorter time, and at the same time to take and process a greater amount of printing requests. In other words, with such a POD based printing environment, overall productivity will most likely carry great importance.
Also, it is expected that various types of printing requests will come from a wide variety of customers, and jobs which the printing system under such a printing environment receives will include a great number of large-scale jobs (jobs which involve a great number of sheets to be printed). Further, cases wherein such large-scale jobs are concentrated in certain periods are expected. Taking this into consideration, with a POD based printing environment, there will be demand from the market such as the POD market for a printing system which can handle a variety of multiple jobs with high efficiency and productivity, while taking into consideration the deadlines from the customers.
Thus, it can be readily assumed that a POD-environment-based printing environment will be quite different from an office environment, both in usage cases and in user needs.
With the above in mind, let us reconsider the above example of the job recovery function in a printing system. While this job recovery function may be perfectly satisfactory in an office-environment-based printing environment, it most likely will have difficulty in handling user needs in a POD based printing environment. A specific example will now be given by expanding the above example, to further examine this issue.
For example, let us say that the job Y of which printing process was started due to the printing of the job X being interrupted, is a large-scale job which requires printing on a large number of sheets. In this case, with the printing system having the above-described job recovery function, the job X will have to stand by for a long time before printing thereof is resumed. In other words, regardless of how speedily the printing interruption cause is for the job X recovered from, printing of the job X cannot be resumed until printing of the job Y ends. It is readily conceivable that such a situation could occur even though the job X is almost completely finished. In an office environment, such usage cases themselves are scarce, so hardly any attention has been paid thereto. However, the situation in this example is of great concern in a POD-environment-based printing environment, where how efficiently and productively such multiple large-scale jobs can be handed is of great importance.
Still, even if a printing system capable of handling the above problem were configured, other problems can be expected as well.
For example, let is examine a configuration where the above problem is handled by an arrangement wherein the processing of the job Y, which has been started while printing of the job X is interrupted, is forcibly stopped upon the operator removing the interruption cause of the job X.
Such a configuration could affect the printing results of the job Y depending on the contents of the job Y, such as particular types of post-processing which the job Y might include.
In addition, there will most likely be cases in a POD environment wherein the system is running under predetermined scheduling, so as to process the widely-varied large-scale jobs from various clients in a proper order. In such a schedule environment, having the apparatus process situations under its own judgment may not be suitable.
As described above, applying a technology from the office environment to the POD environment, which is entirely different in terms of usage cases and user needs, can lead to completely new problems which could not be foreseen in the office environment.